Moses and Multiculturalism

By R. R. Reno
First Things

Moses does what many would-be world citizens who have committed real-world acts of terrorism and conspiracy have done throughout the modern era. Moses flees from Pharaoh into Midian as Lenin fled to Switzerland in order to escape from the tsar’s secret police. And is this surprising? What could be more natural and normal? What, to recall Nussbaum, could be more simply and post-culturally human than to revert back to our basic animal desire for security and survival? Or, as the shopkeeper in Islamabad worries, what is more nakedly human than to seek transformation of the world into an amoral playground for the powerful who seek dominion and pleasure?

God does not leave Moses alone in his incipient multicultural personality, his Bolshevik combination of universalism, idealism, amorality, and selfishness. On Mount Horeb, the LORD God appears to Moses and commands him to return to Egypt to act on behalf of the enslaved Israelites. Moses resists, anticipating our present ambivalences. Who am I to go? How can I impose my worldview upon others? If I do go, then in whose name should I say I was sent? After all, some say we should live according to the god of duty, others the god of utility, and still others the will of the majority. God does not give Moses an epistemological principle to adjudicate. He does not provide a governing principle or a master ideal. Instead, the LORD gives Moses his everlasting name.

...

To my mind, the trajectory of the biblical account of Moses, a trajectory reenacted every time a child is circumcised or baptized or in any way dedicated to a determinate cultural authority rather than left free to float along in life as an unattached, uncommitted, unclaimed world citizen, helps us understand an important point of conflict in the current culture wars. On one side, we have an educational ideal widely held. This vision wishes to deracinate. If we can live as cultural polytheists, exposed to many different perspectives and allowing no divine name to take possession of our souls, then our moral imaginations will be freed from the limiting confines of no one culture’s view of good and evil. On the other side, we have an old-fashioned ideal, one as old as culture itself. In this view, the human person must be subjected to and formed by that authority of the divine, without which he or she will live only as an animal, seeking only the base goods of pleasure, power, and survival. The conflict is fundamental and irreconcilable.

Each of us must struggle to understand how to live our lives in a pluralistic, democratic society. But to my mind, however fuzzy and uncertain we might be about any particular public policy or social project, we must at least be clear about Moses. We should want to follow his trajectory, and there can be no compromise with those who prize his multicultural youth. For he who is not a servant of a cultural authority deeply installed is merely human–which is to say, a slave to his passions and servant of his self-interest, who, when he comes to realize his base existence, is all too easily victim of thin, ideological deities who promise the immediate psychological satisfactions of a veneer of moral idealism. (more)

Why Aren’t Americans Very Happy?

By J P Moreland
Scriptorium Daily

But what if there is no ultimate purpose? Suppose we played Monopoly with one rule change: You may do anything during your turn. So you put hotels everywhere. I follow by dumping the board over and turning on the television. Immediately you realize that your move is futile. Why? Because if the game as a whole is without purpose, the individual moves within the game are meaningless. What if atheistic Darwinists are right: we are the result of a blind, meaningless process and life is just “one darn thing after another”? In such a world the difference between Mother Teresa and Saddam Hussein reduces to the difference between a Big Mac and a Whopper. (more)

Oxford’s Preposterous Proposition

By Jonah Goldberg
National Review Online

Last week, I appeared at the Oxford Union to debate the proposition: “This House regrets the founding of The United States of America.” Such is the extent of anti-Americanism out there that this was considered to be a reasonable debate topic by Britain’s best and brightest.
...
The defenders of the proposition were originally scheduled to be one student plus three invited speakers: two Islamist radicals and a bona fide Communist.
...
And, if you are honest with yourselves, you know — KNOW! — that should any of my opponents succeed in having their perfect world realized, those of you who did not stay in Britain to fight such oppression would count yourselves lucky to find asylum in the United States of America.
...
Yes, anti-Americanism fashions itself a form of anti-globalization. But this is most often a ruse. Do keep in mind that my opponents represent a truly tyrannical form of globalization. Whether it’s “Workers of the World Unite” or the World Caliphate, the choice they are presenting is globalization for losers, while America, to the extent it represents globalization at all, offers the globalization of liberty.

The mere fact that you had to select three men from outside this heritage to defend the proposition, is proof enough that it is indefensible from within it. For, again, if you want to lament the birth of America, you must lament all that has been born of America.

And if you are prepared to do that, you are prepared to regret all that was born of Britain as well.

To which I say again: Surely you must be joking. (more)

A Two-Fold Cultural Crisis (Science and the Humanities), Classical Education, and a Warning

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Some people might hesitate to join this intellectual project. The investment of time and energy to read books of classical philosophy and to study nature seems daunting. “I know that Jesus loves me so why do I have to worry?” There is truth to this impulse. Jesus Christ is a real person, the Second Person of the Trinity. Because He is real, knowing Him is most important thing a man can do. However, knowing Him is an intellectual activity. It is not only an intellectual activity, but there is thought and history involved. Jesus Christ connects to history. He was a wise teacher. His teachings contain propositions which either cohere or do not cohere with other alternative teachings. If we say that we love Jesus, but do not desire to examine his place in history or his teachings, then we lie.

Christians must love a real God passionately enough to crave knowledge of him. The must love His Word enough to find that the Bible itself does, as a whole, connect to the visible world. Christians must have faith, but this faith should be consistent with reason which is not a mere religious rationalization. The Heaven’s Gate cult is alleged to have bought a telescope to look at the comet Hale-Bopp. When their view through the telescope did not confirm their beliefs, they returned the telescope on the assumption it was defective. This is the path of madness that leads to death. (more)

Tips on Education for Parents (Home Schoolers and Otherwise)

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

As much as possible Christians must renew the cultural imagination of the Fathers of the Church. One way to do this is to soak in the cultural background that formed the basis for the New Testament, council, creeds, and the liturgy of those times. One should read a good deal of Greek philosophy and then review other forms of Hellenistic writing, especially theater and science. The central Jewish and Christian elements demand greater and more sustained attention.

Hopefully this total immersion will begin at an early age so that the mind of a child is formed by the dialectic between Athens and Jerusalem. Children reared on great books, great music, and great ideas will be able to enjoy the best of popular culture, but also have access to the higher things.

...

Finally, it is the essence of the dialectic that no person learns alone. Find a group of like minded people and read together. Discuss everything as a family. Pick a family television show and discuss that as well. The more you question and allow yourself to be questioned, the more you will discover about the budding young adult in your house. My oldest son and I are beginning this process. It has frustrating moments when I provoke eye rolling, but it is mostly a joy for us both.

Love your children, give them to God, set them free to follow the Logos wherever it leads and all will be well! (more)

On Picking a College: A Parental Perspective

Paul Spears
Scriptorium Daily

Parents need to train their children to be able to distinguish the difference between occupation and vocation. An occupation is the way in which we earn money to feed and shelter ourselves. A vocation is the call of our life. Specifically, as a Christian, it is about our place as servants of God, and our submission of our lives to his kingdom purpose. Christians in today’s world often conflate occupation with vocation.
...

Education is about our ability to understand reality. To say something is true is to say something about the reality that exists outside of us. The modern university is not dedicated to the examination of reality. Most institutes of higher education are not selling knowledge. They are selling success (occupation or career). You are told if you go to (place name of prestigious university here) we can enable you to be successful (that is get a good job that makes a great deal of money). If you ask a university like UC Berkeley questions about fulfillment, purpose or happiness they will not have a very clear answer (if any at all).

Secular universities are unable to answer questions about fulfillment and purpose because those ideas are outside of their paradigm of understanding. Secular universities hold to science as the arbiter of what counts as knowledge. Philosopher Dallas Willard points out that education in those universities is no longer about knowledge or understanding of humanity, but about exalting freedom, and pleasure.

...

Parents need to show their children the difference between following the world’s definition of success, and success in the kingdom. The Apostle Paul states in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” It is the renewal of our mind with God’s truth that enables us to pursue a truly pleasing life with and for God. This is the type of faith that must permeate the life of our students in their educational endeavors. Without a strong Christian education they will be swimming in a pool of naturalistic muck that can infect the health of their soul for years to come. (more)

Political Passivity—Vice or Christian Virtue?

By Gregory Koukl
Townhall.com

It’s not only the left that sounds the alarm when Christians “jeopardize the separation of church and state” by engaging in political action. Some Christians object, too. One evangelical leader offered this stern warning: “There should not be even a hint of anything political in our public discourse.”

This may sound spiritual in some circles, but it can be devastating to the public good. Without question the Gospel has supernatural power to change lives, and those changed lives can change the world. William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King, and Mother Teresa come immediately to mind.

...

“The effective and mass communication of the gospel depends upon the freedom to proclaim it,” wrote Hugh Hewitt. The Apostle Paul told Christ’s followers to pray for those in authority so believers might lead a tranquil, quiet life in godliness and dignity. In a democratic society those prayers can and should be augmented by action.

...

Biblical teaching is clear: God intends government to use law to enforce morality. Informed Christian people are essential to that process because the concept of justice that grounds good government can be twisted by evil men in power. If the Church doesn’t stand in the gap giving substance to the words “good” and “evil,” then nothing prevents leadership from reversing the definitions, praising evil and punishing good. Tragically, this is already happening.

...

Does the Scripture teach we should be silent on anything that doesn’t have to do with saving souls? Is it God’s desire that we abandon everything this side of the grave as profane and utterly lost? Is nothing in this life valuable, important, or worth redeeming?

Ironically, the church is still being blamed for the moral silence of its past, including its uneven response to Abolition and, later, to the Civil Rights movement. Christian inactivity in the face of injustice then didn’t communicate purity, but approval of slavery and racial prejudice. Past unwillingness to be involved in “politics” has been a blight on the Church ever since.

...

a properly constructed set of laws can change the heart. David Lewellyn has observed: “Laws begin by imposing norms of conduct, but conclude by teaching morality and values. As these values are inculcated, the coercive power of law recedes as its moral force rises to govern the conduct of the people.”

How does this happen? A sound moral code—one that’s consonant with the internal capacity for moral development God has given each person—tutors us by adding clarity to our innate sense of right and wrong.

...

When someone tells me that laws can never change a fallen person’s heart, I ask them if they apply that philosophy to their children. Does the moral training of our children consist merely of preaching the Gospel to them? Wouldn’t we consider it unconscionable to neglect a child’s moral instruction with the excuse that laws can never change a child’s rebellious heart?

...

The First Amendment restricts the government, not the people. Jefferson’s wall is a one-way wall. Any religious person, any religious organization, any religious conviction has its place in the public debate. It’s called pluralism, in the classic sense of the word.

Notice there are not two distinct provisions here, but one. Non-establishment has no purpose by itself. Freedom of religion is the goal, and non-establishment is the means. The only way to have true freedom of religion is to keep government out of religion’s affairs. This provides for what Steven Monsma calls “positive neutrality.” This view, in Monsma’s words, “defines religious freedom in terms of a governmental neutrality toward religion in which no religion is favored over any other, and neither religion nor secularism is favored over each other.”

...

Christian author Philip Yancey writes, “We have no mandate to ‘Christianize’ the United States—an impossible goal in any case. Yet Christians can work simultaneously toward a different goal, the ‘moralization’ of society. We can help tether the values and even the laws of society to some basis in transcendence.” (more)